We technically resist anything that is new to us because it may pose a threat to our safety and survival and healing of an old emotional wound is definitely something new. Better off with a known pain than an unknown one, that's how ego operates. What is resistance? Resistance is opposition and refusal to see one's truth and one's reality, especially when in pain. Resistance to admitting and acknowledging that one is grieving in some way is what poses an obstacle between one's authentic, conscious life and what one is unaware about, lying in their subconscious.
There is nothing more easily misinterpreted and glossed over than resistance to looking at one's wounds. Resistance can take many forms & can express itself in many ways, hence it can be very tricky to see it for what it is while one is identified with it. When you have a trauma or a deeper wound, resisting to it feels like safety. Not admitting to pain feels like it will go away eventually, but that's the great trap. Nothing goes away just because we dont look at it long enough. On the contrary, any pain or trauma that is not seen and acknowledged for what it is eventually finds it's way to the light of consciousness in the most detrimental ways for the individual, like diseases. A dis-ease is nothing but a resistance that has been forcefully kept in place for longer than it was supposed to. So what does a resistance look like and what is it, more precisely? Well, resistance to one's inner pain and trauma may look like denial, coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms, overcompensations, escapism, perfectionism, self indulgence, self harm, addictions, self betrayal, self abandonment, deflection, projection etc. Actually, in short you can use anything as a resistance tool as long as it helps to not see your pain. One cannot resist pain without at the same time resisting healing as well. Resistance is all about the lack of willingness to give up on what caused your emotional wound in the first place. We unconsciously hang onto our pain and we are not easily convinced to let it go because we have developed tactics and strategies to deal with it as it is, even if these strategies and tactics are unhealthy on the long term. The ego's desire to keep us safe is only going to work on a short term, never on a long term. The ego's need and desperate desire is to put an end to the pain of the existing moment. And so it does not care for the fact that this creates more resistance to the grief that builds up over time. Pain can become suffering only when we resist to it. We add meaning to everything because our brains want to make sense and understand. But meaning is the gateway to resistance. If somebody cheats on you you immediately make it mean they're a prick or maybe that something was bad and wrong about you that made that person cheat on you. Adding meaning automatically adds one perspective, a narrow perspective on something that happened and that one perspective creates and breeds resistance to a broader and more of a bird's eye view understanding of your life. One feels that by admitting to how deeply it hurts to be betrayed that makes them vulnerable and weak. This is how resistance is born. Resisting what is, especially if what is is painful, is the weapon and the ultimate tool of ego, because ego's main role is to help you survive. You cannot survive in emotional pain and so ego comes up with all sorts of creative and mind blowing strategies to keep you away from your truth, which is that you're in emotional pain. Let's dive deeper and see what resistance consists of.I previously said that anything can be used as a resistance tool and I listed the main ways in which we resist pain, and therefore healing. But I want to help you determine and recognize your own resistance to acknowledging your pain and hence healing by pinpointing what this resistance looks like.
1. Denial. Have you ever been in a situation where you were triggered into feeling what we conventionally call a negative emotion like sadness and you have told yourself I'm fine even if you truly weren't? Or if your husband comes home drunk and you tell yourself or your kids "he's just tired from work?" That's denial.
2. Coping mechanisms. To me all coping mechanisms are unhealthy in the long run because instead of dealing with your emotional wounds, you cope and adapt around the wound. Examples of coping mechanisms are forcing yourself to think positive and not tolerating anything that reminds of your pain, isolating yourself, doing meditation to shut your emotions off, exercising to shut your emotions off, doing self care with the purpose of shutting your emotions off, telling yourself you don't care what happens anymore, quickly trying to find solutions and fixing the situation that triggered you without taking time to look into it etc. I will list some in the upcoming points.
3. Defense mechanisms are meant to reduce anxiety and obviously diminish any threats to the ego. Examples of defense mechanisms: humour, sarcasm and cynicism, deflection (which is the mechanism in which the threatened person turns against the person who is threatening him or her by a counterattack),passive aggressiveness, projection (when you project on the person who is threatening to you what you feel) etc. There are many types of defense mechanisms that the ego came up with in order to adapt to the reality at hand. They all form the resistance to healing.
4. Addictions can be considered and are considered as coping mechanisms. However because in this era addictions take many,many forms that you're not even aware of, I will talk about addictions as a separate topic. Addictions are the modern man's favorite type of avoidance of reality because it gives the person the dopamine needed quickly, through the form of an instant gratification. I myself was an addict. I was a heavy smoker and I was a drinker. I always resorted to these external "solutions" whenever reality felt overwhelming, too intense and it felt like it was about to engulf me, swallow me. This is actually a symptom of lack of self regulatory tools that I should have given to me in childhood by my caregivers whenever I was in disstressful situations . But my parents, because they themselves did not have the self regulation tools & where incapable of handling their own emotions, resorted to the same unhealthy ways of dealing with problems as they were given by their parents. And so, I remember when I was feeling sad, my mother either rushed me into feeling better with words like "There's no reason for you to feel this way, come on, cheer up",or she would come in to save the day for me in my place without teaching me how to do it myself, or she would distract my attention with candies or by giving me something to do. This all is but a conditioning to look for and want instant gratification. This has conditioned my brain into wanting sudden and quick relief through any means whenever in a painful situation. When I became an adult, this instant gratification translated into additions. So whenever I was hit by an anxiety attack, because I did not know what to do, i picked up a cigarette which offered me the relief from pain. To the addict, the cost at which he or she pursues the addition does not matter. Addiction is a way for the addict to deal with an excruciating pain that he or she doesn't know otherwise how to deal with. Because to the ego what lies beyond admitting to the pain that one feels is nothing but death. One literally feels like one is going to die if one allows themselves to feel that rejected, denied and dismissed pain. 5. Overcompensations are also a tool of the ego to resist feeling anything that is not considered ok. We overcompensate by working too much because deep down inside we feel lazy and unworthy, for example, we overcompensate in a relationship by self sacrificing our needs and focusing only on our partners because our partner is emotionally unavailable etc. When you overcompensate, you try hard to show the world you are not what you think they see you as. One has a poor and low self image and needs to prove otherwise in any triggering situation if and when overcompensation is their way of expressing resistance. Problem with overcompensation is that it wears you out, it makes you betray yourself and it also forces you to live inauthentically.
6. Overgeneralisation is a defense mechanism that is put into play whenever a person's shame is triggered. Shame is all about not being good enough, not meeting an outside expectation of how one should be. Shame is all about the conviction of being inherently bad. And so whenever something happens that triggers our shame, we tend to protect ourselves from feeling the agonizing shame by overgeneralising, such as when we are betrayed by our lover, we tend to say All men are pigs or all women are whores etc. To overgeneralize something gives us the impresion that it was never our fault and it's all about blaming the external for whatever happened to us.
7. Escapism is an unconscious form of adaptive strategy. We tend to escape a seemingly insurmountable situation that we feel powerless to by reading a book for instance, watching a movie, dreaming with our eyes open. We tend to defend ourselves and cope at the same time by not being present, that's what espacim is. Not being here, where pain is happensling, is your mind's way of convincing you that you still have control of the situation. However I want to say that in certain extreme situations, escapism is the only way at hand that we have to protect ourselves from what is going on around us. If we are raped, abused, battered etc or we are in a prison cell or captured, the only way to not lose our minds and to deal with our reality at hand is by escaping it, which, in such circumstances, cannot be blamed or considered wrong because it is the only choice one has. One might slip into depersonalization or derealization, which have to do with detaching from reality and from self.
8. Self harm is a coping mechanism and despite what is commonly known as self harm, like cutting oneself, punching or burning oneself, self harm may bear many facets. For instance, self harm may be considered anything that is excessive or, in some cases, not enough. Overeating or undereating, drinking too much alcohol or overdosing. It is a non verbal way of asking for desperate help and it is also a resistance because the person does not know how to deal with the situation at hand, nor do they recognize the pain they are in.
9. Self indulgence ties into my previous point, about excess. Self indulgence is a mechanism of compensation for the lack of love, worth and real nurture in our childhood. We tend to self indulgence because we avoid to see that hole in our hearts that the binge eating or whatever we indulge in, is struggling to cover up. This is creating resistance to what is, meaning the pain.
10. Self betrayal. This strategy to adapt is a life saving response to how we were taught to interact with our parents. When our parents do not accept us unconditionally and put labels on us (you're lazy, you're a liar, you're not doing enough like your sibling etc), because it is a matter of survival to be accepted and to belong, we betray ourselves. How? We learn to neglect and disown the needs we have and the aspects in us the parents have deemed as undesirable (if you're called lazy by your parents, you overcompensate by overworking in order to prove them wrong and hence you betray the part in you that is lazy because it is an undesirable trait. You betray that aspect in you, while the opposite to that would be you sitting down with your lazy part and understand why it is lazy. Maybe it is lazy because it doesn't like what it's doing and maybe because it never receives recognition and validation for what it does so why bother) It is therefore a form of resistance to pain.
11. Self abandonment goes hand in hand with self betrayal. You abandon yourself at the same time that you betray yourself to be accepted and loved and belong in your community and family. Self abandonment is one of the most painful ways in which children choose unconsciously to cope with a very rigid and non compassionate upbringing that does not entertain differences and uniqueness. You resist the pain in you by abandoning it. I myself have had and still have the abandonment trauma and looking back I realised that it was indeed my strongest resistance to the pain in me because I grew up thinking my authenticity was unlovable and despicable and I had to abandon that authenticity in order to please my mother who was continually giving me the silent treatment anytime I did things my way. It was how children in such situations survived and they take this self abandonment into adulthood.
12. Overlay or fantasy. One of the ways in which we resist the truth of our wounds is by overlaying some kind of fantasy onto the actual situation. I told you in my first videos how I was a victim of domestic violence and how I coped with 8 years of emotional abuse and physical abuse. I created a fantasy in my mind, I fabricated an alternative explanation for my reality. When he used to come home drunk and humiliate me or even when he humiliated while sober, my fantasy explanation was that he was just kidding and that this is his sense of humor and that I should be less sensitive. When he used to beat me and then apologize, I told myself it was an accident. Everytime it happened I gaslighted myself into believing it was a mistake. The fantasy that I overlayed onto my relationship kept me going and kept me enduring the abuse for the sake of a future when I am able to make him see me, the true me and make him hence love me. I brainwashed myself into accepting the abuse in hopes of a brighter future. And this happened until the day I was beaten so badly that I had no more excuses and justifications to defend him. The elaborate fantasy where he was the good guy and I was the broken soul that he will see and love fell apart like a house of cards. But this fantasy was a very strong and resilient one and the very resistant nature of it nearly destroyed my life.
13. Minimization by comparison. An unconscious technique that we may find ourselves using as a means to resist the overwhelming pain is to compare ourselves to others, specifically those who have it worse than us. This is the ego's way of making us, in an illusory manner, more resilient and it makes us feel less unfortunate and it bolsters our self confidence. However even if it apparently makes us feel better about ourselves on the spot, the minimization of our trials and tribulations will backfire eventually. Why? Because what it actually does is dismissing and invalidating us and our emotions. It is a form of self rejection of our truth in the moment, because every pain is deserving of love, awareness and unconditional presence, not just a pain that society deems as worthy of all those things. For instance if you grieve your breakup, you may catch yourself saying "Well at least I have it good compared to people who lost their child". The message you're sending to your subconscious mind is actually that you should not feel what you're feeling because, by comparison, it seems unreasonable. It will not make you feel better, it just reinforces the resistance to your sorrow and it disconnects you from your self.
14. Numbing oneself is a mechanism through which one copes with -, but I can safely say one also defends oneself against - a seemingly insurmountable wave of painful emotions. However, numbing oneself ends up disconnecting the person not just from the bad feelings, but also from the positive ones as well. Numbing oneself can be done through drugs, but also by punishing oneself (through constant self criticism, self humiliation that we internalized from our parents etc) anytime one has any feelings. The person doing this is actually pushing aside the aspect in the self that is feeling and conditionning the mind to separate itself from the emotions. One who does that looks and feels cold, distant, like a robot. The resistance to pain created in this person a deep inner separation.
15. Blame or deflection is another very familiar way in which someone decides unconsciously to build resistance to what is sorrowful. When you point your finger at someone else and blame them for how you feel, it takes all the responsibility off of your shoulders. You are not in charge or control of your inner world when you do that, but your ego is willing to risk that instead of admitting to beiing wrong or admitting to the vulnerability of pain. Whenever we choose to deflect, we feel like we have been exposed and so we choose to move the limelight onto someone else's flaws. Our ego believes that it is the way in which we can stay safe from judgment, from being overwhelmed with pain. Blaming the others is what may give you a short, on the spot relief, but the cost of it will eventually come later. Actually all the forms of resistance to pain come at a huge cost that nobody feels in the moment. What cost is that? Well everytime we turn a blind eye to the pain it pents up energy. It's like an embankment built to prevent flooding, but everytime you say no to your pain, the waters grow and rise larger and larger in intensity until it's too much for the embankment to hold. This is when the so called mental breakdown, psychosis episode or the term that I prefer to use - spiritual awakening- happens. Not everyone is meant to have a spiritual awakening, but almost everyone had an episode of releasing built up pain, when they cried a lot or got unusually angry, discharging all the energy. But what most people do after these episodes is to think that it's all gone and they are magically healed somehow and they go back to the same unhealthy patterns. It doesn't work that way. You may feel relieved and like a heavy rock was lifted off of your chest, but you're not done. Why? Because even if the pent up negative energy found a way out, the wound and the trauma holding it was not seen and dealt with. Crying is extremely beneficial, but it's mostly a symptom, a strong indicator of something deep within yyou that needs your attention. Not acknowledging that is how resistance builds again within you. This is how patterns work. They are called patterns because they repeat themselves in cycles over and over, in behaviour and thoughts. Self awareness is crucial and plays the most important part. Becoming aware of the forms in which resistance manifests in you is terribly important. We all have our own resistance to pain and it manifests differently in each one of us. The secret is the awareness. See your resistance to your pain and how it plays out. Whenever you feel an uncomfortable feeling, watch yourself. What do you do? Do you go over to the fridge and eat all the icecream? Do you pick up a cigarette and smoke it? Do you blame your friend, your family for how you feel without noticing your own role into the situation? Do you go to the gym, exercise to feel better? Witness all the ways in which you run away from yourself in the most difficult moments. By being aware you automatically also disidentify from your resistance as you step out of the vibration of resistance and into more of that of surrender. Even though you should not expect yourself to surrender to feeling your emotions right after starting to witnessing them and hence disidentifying, know that it will eventually happen as it is a natural next step that you will take when you feel truly ready to meet your disowned and denied emotions for the first time. The resistance to pain is a survival response that our ego came up with in order to keep us safe. Resistance is not inherently bad or wrong as we may be quick to judge it, it's a way to defend ourselves and shelter ourselves from any more adversity. It took you years of practice to perfect your type of resistance and so do not except it to melt away overnight. Keep coming back to the present moment and to yourself and to how you are triggered and witness, notice yourself from a detached space. Healing is not easy and it won't happen without commitment. Commitment to yourself and to the inner child that did not have anyone truly there for him or her to sit down with and show love and compassion. And so the inner child did the best they could with what they had available at the moment in order to survive something that was too big for him or her to understand and make sense of. What you do now by healing is actually giving permission to the child to be himself or herself fully while you are unconditionally present, something he or she never got from their caregivers. It's the most beautiful gift you can give yourself.
Comments